Yesterday

 Yesterday I left my class in the hands of an aide for 30 minutes before lunch and went to my dentist.  I had been flossing with one of those little flossers a few weeks ago and I have a dead tooth with a crown on it in the back.  The floss got stuck on the crown and I yanked it and my tooth has hurt ever since.

Actually my jaw hurt more than the tooth, because my bite was off.  You know what never hurt my jaw?  Not flossing.  Here I was trying to be a responsible citizen….

I was glad my dentist could get me in and glad he is a few blocks from my school.  He tried prying the crown off (hurt + didn’t work).  They took an X-ray and all was well with the tooth.  He thought maybe there was a piece of floss stuck under the crown causing the trouble.  He said there was nothing to do but let my body absorb it.  He said that it could cause swelling that could mess up my bite.  So he smoothed out the crown to fix my bite.

I wonder if it will be messed up again if the swelling goes down, but who am I to tell him what to do?

Again, not flossing never caused me a day’s trouble.

Back at school, we read a story called “Earth and Its Neighbors”.  They were riveted.  They are super fascinated by space.  One boy, who is an English learner and just tries to disappear in any class discussion was particularly curious.  He asked a million questions, like where does the sun go when it is night.  Another boy who has clearly learned a lot about space explained it all very well, and was even nice about it--sometimes he acts like other people are dumb.  They had questions about black holes, the Milky Way (no, it doesn’t look like the candy bar), life on other planets, aliens, why we don’t move to Mars, how long until we can move to Mars, how long would it take to travel to another solar system, and are there other Earths out there?

I knew a few of the answers, but a lot of them were I don’t know.  I absolutely love it when they are so engaged and asking question after question, even when I don’t know the answers.  It is the natural high of teaching that I’ve been chasing since college.

Right in the middle of our discussion, there were two police officers looking in the little window of my door.  My mind immediately went to a school shooting and should I let them in and a frantic risk assessment.  It is crazy to me that we have decided as a society that we just sometimes have school shootings, but here we are and teachers brains aren’t OK as a result.  (The other day, a second grade teacher was chatting with me during recess duty and we started talking about what we would do if there was a school shooter and we were at recess.  We’re not OK.)

Anyway, my spinning brain remembered that we were doing Read with Police yesterday.  My students were a little disregulated by them showing up too, but I welcomed them in and they wanted a book to read to the class.  The class requested Hooway for Wodney Wat, because the children have good taste.  One of the police officers took the book with trepidation and said, “Now I can’t read as well as your teacher…”

I told him he could do a lot of things better than me and yikes, bench press is on the list.  He was a big guy.

He did a good job reading and his partner cracked up right along with the students.  Hooway for Wodney Wat forever.

After recess, they had a little time to read on their own and several of them selected books about space.  

One girl said, “I never knew I was interested in space!”

Also yesterday a student was studying the map I have on the wall and said, "Wait, Kentucky is in America!?!  I thought it was in China!"

I confirmed it is in America.  He said, "Are you sure?"

I was very sure.

Another student showed me the mistake in his iReady reading lesson because of how crochet was spelled.  He said, "I know how to spell crochet and that is not correct."

I promised him it was and he did not believe me.  Not a bit.  I asked him how he would spell it.  He said, "Not like that."   

You win some and lose some with these guys.

School is endlessly varied and rewarding (besides the school shooting thing) and that’s the truth.